Related papers: Dynamical formation of center domains in quark-glu…
Quantum Chromodynamics exhibits a hadronic confined phase at low to moderate temperatures and, at a critical temperature $T_C$, undergoes a transition to a deconfined phase known as the quark-gluon plasma. The nature of this deconfinement…
The deconfinement transition in non-Abelian gauge theory is understood as spontaneous breaking of $\mathbb{Z}_N$ symmetry at high temperatures. Accordingly, quark-gluon plasma generally includes some partial cells called center domains,…
We argue that the domain structure of deconfined QCD matter, which can be inferred from the properties of the Polyakov loop, can simultaneously explain the two most prominent experimentally verified features of the quark-gluon plasma,…
We study the phase structure of QCD at finite temperature within a Polyakov-loop enhanced quark-meson model. Such a model describes the chiral as well as the confinement-deconfinement dynamics. In the present investigation, based on the…
We present a unified approach to the thermodynamics of hadron-quark-gluon matter at finite temperatures on the basis of a quark cluster expansion in the form of a generalized Beth-Uhlenbeck approach with a generic ansatz for the hadronic…
Using finite temperature SU(3) lattice gauge theory in the fixed scale approach we analyze center properties of the local Polyakov loop L(x). We construct spatial clusters of points x where the phase of L(x) is near the same center element…
We model the initial confinement-deconfinement transition in relativistic heavy-ion collisions as a rapid quench in view of expected rapid thermalization to a QGP state. The transition is studied using the Polyakov loop model, with the…
The deconfinement phase transition in large-$N_c$ QCD is studied within the framework of an effective Polyakov-loop model, where the potential has a U(1) symmetry originating in the large-$N_c$ limit of a Z$_{N_c}$-symmetric model. At the…
At high temperature measurements of the Polyakov loop suggest a deconfinement transition to the (strongly interacting) quark-gluon plasma. At the same time at the infinitely large temperature the four-dimensional QCD is reduced to the…
We analyze properties of local Polyakov loops using quenched as well as dynamical SU(3) gauge configurations for a wide range of temperatures. It is demonstrated that for both, the confined and the deconfined regime, the local Polyakov loop…
We study QCD with three degenerate flavors of dynamical quarks using first-principles lattice simulations. For a specific choice of imaginary isospin chemical potential, this theory possesses an exact center symmetry, just like pure gauge…
For SU(3) lattice gauge theory we study properties of static quark sources represented by local Polyakov loops. We find that for temperatures both below and above T_c coherent domains exist where the phases of the local loops have similar…
We study confinement and deconfinement in dense two color QCD by analyzing the dynamics of thermal quarks and gluons. The Polyakov loop is used as a probe of the relevant thermal excitations, distinguishing quark and hadron dominated…
We study a model of quark-gluon plasma of 2+1 flavors Quantum Chromodynamics in terms of quasiparticles propagating in a condensate of Polyakov loops. The Polyakov loop is coupled to quasiparticles by means of a gas-like effective…
A synthesis of Polyakov loop models of the deconfinement transition and quasiparticle models of gluon plasma thermodynamics leads to a class of models in which gluons move in a non-trivial Polyakov loop background. These models are…
The theory of confinement and deconfinement is discussed as based on the properties of the QCD vacuum. The latter are described by field correlators of colour-electric and colour-magnetic fields in the vacuum, which can be calculated…
We discuss a recent approach for overcoming the poor convergence of the perturbative expansion for the thermodynamic potential of QCD. This approach is based on self-consistent approximations which allow for a gauge-invariant and manifestly…
We discuss properties of local Polyakov loops in the deconfinement transition of SU(3) lattice gauge theory at finite temperature using the fixed scale approach. In particular we study spatial clusters where local Polyakov loops have phases…
We review theoretical aspects of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) at finite temperature. The most important physical variable to characterize hot QCD is the Polyakov loop, which is an approximate order parameter for quark deconfinement in a hot…
A qualitative mechanism for the emergence of domain structured background gluon fields due to singularities in gauge field configurations is considered, and a model displaying a type of mean field approximation to the QCD partition function…